Night Owl Cards

  Yay, you're seeing another one of these!   As you've no doubt have read already, Chris of The Collector sent out some generous giveaway packages to celebrate a couple of milestones in his collecting life -- 40 years of collecting and 10 years of blogging. Today is the exact day he started his current blog. The baseball card blogging world is more interesting for it.   As you know, I love milestones, in fact I have one coming up with the next post (it was a little tricky coordinating programming). When I look back, my 10th year of blogging arrived in 2018 and I hit 40 years of collecting in 2015.   The Collector said he's stepping away from collecting at the end of his anniversary year but I believe he'll still be writing on his blog, which is great news as I enjoyed some of his researched-themed series, particularly the All-Time Teams one.   But this is not about the future or the past, it's about round numbers and goodies!   I have 10 separate images ...

I was up early this morning to do a little Christmas shopping. I like to get out there before regular, everyday people start doing insane things that make me never want to interact with humanity again. It worked very well. I only got into two AAAs (almost auto accidents), both totally related to the stupidity of the other party. And there was only one person-leaning-on-their-cart-and-steering-while-totally-oblivious-to-anyone-else that I wanted to tip over. But while in Target (yes, I am high-class when it comes to gift-giving) I felt the need for a little "me time," and I stopped by the card section. It's quite the disaster these days, eh? First, there's way too much non-baseball. Stop it. Secondly, you can't get me to buy yet another Bowman product. We all know they're practically the same cards that were in Bowman in June. Thirdly, unless I want to engage my inner shiny, everything else is dull, dull, dull. That is when I looked to the anonymous base...

In yet another unsettling development in the modern card scene, I have suddenly grown weary of rack packs. This is disturbing. In my cash-crunch state, I have subsisted on rack packs to obtain my weekly intake of modern card nutrients. Blasters bind up the system. But I have grown increasingly frustrated with the rack pack servings. It's basically my own fault. I'm looking for Dodgers only, and buying rack packs isn't going to get that done. But I never thought it would be this brutal. For example, I have pulled a grand total of two Dodgers (Ramirez and Martin) out of Topps Chrome. Meanwhile I have dupes of five different Angels. Last night I decided to try another Topps Chrome rack pack, plus a Bowman Chrome rack pack and a Topps Update rack pack. They were all hanging out together, side-by-side, and I couldn't resist trying out the newbies, along with my annoying friend, Topps Chrome. I'm not going to show too many of the cards, because they're di...

Consider this your alternative Super Bowl Sunday entertainment. All of you can't possibly be interested in a bloated spectacle can you? When I last left off, Topps and Upper Deck were locked in a death grip after the first 18 cards of the rack pack challenge. I'm surprised that it's all tied at 9, considering how agonizingly dull I find Upper Deck's contribution. But Topps kind of dropped the ball by handing me doubles in the first group of cards. Let's see if Topps can step up its game (it's Super Bowl Sunday. I need to be in peak cliche form). Card 19: Topps, Ivan Rodriguez; Upper Deck, Brandon Allen Once again, Topps is doing an excellent job of hiding logos -- a much better job than UD, which is supposed to be hiding logos. But aside from that, I don't know who Brandon Allen is. Topps 10, Upper Deck 9 Card 20: Topps, Victor Martinez; Upper Deck, Ryan Garko That is a super colorful card in Martinez. And Garko is, well, a Giant. Topps 11...